Smaller electric SUV revealed ahead of late 2020 premiere, with the promise of 480km range and an eventual US starting price of $39,000 ($55k AUD)

Tesla has given the world its first look at its fifth model line, the Model Y mid-size SUV, which founder Elon Musk believes will be as popular as the Model X and Model 3 combined when it hits the market in September/October 2020.

The sleek crossover will have a panoramic roof, a Model 3-style 15-inch horizontal touchscreen dominating a minimalist cabin, and the option of seven seats. Musk also expects it to be “the safest mid-sized SUV in the world”, with all the familiar AutoPilot active safety tech.

Musk promises a launch in the US around October (or Fall 2020), so around 18 months from now. The delay is a symptom of the difficulty in transitioning from prototype to series production, something that the mass-market Model 3 showed up as being extremely hard.

“The factories are as much a part of Tesla as the product,” Musk said. “If not more. I really think the insane difficulty of mass manufacturing a vehicle reliably and at scale is under appreciated. It’s 100 times harder to manufacture than design.”

“It occurred to me a lot of people only heard about Tesla a year or two ago, and EVs are taken for granted. There was a time when EVs seemed ‘very stupid’ and it wasn't that long ago, the idea of creating a car company was ‘stupid’, and an EV company was like stupidity squared," he said.

“11 years ago today Tesla had made one car, and it didn't really work very well, it broke down a lot, it took us another 3 months just to make the second car. Now we’ve made about 550k cars,” he added.

Musk said the Gigafactory in Nevada with 50gWh of capacity is one-third ready, while the massive new manufacturing plant and battery factory in China will be well advanced by the end of 2019, primed for domestic market production.

He also updated watchers of the web stream on Tesla’s Supercharger network, which now comprises 12,000 chargers in 1400 sites across 36 countries. It’s presently rolling out 250kW-capable DC chargers that will apparently charge at 1600km per hour (charging a Model Y is 20 minutes or so, to 80 per cent, we’d guess). There are only two functional ones at the minute.

Musk added that after getting the Model 3 up to production in 2018, the company could also get back to focusing on its Powerwall and solar roof divisions this year, and add software updates to the AutoPilot safety suite. Time will tell there.

Finishing on a quote with a dramatic flourish, Musk said:

“The goal of Tesla was that our fundamental or historical good should be the degree to which we accelerate the rollout of sustainable transport. Our goal all along has been to get the industry to transition to EV. It’s extremely rewarding to see the rest of the industry is going electric. It’s great.

“Where will Tesla be in 10 years? Tesla will be on Mars in 10 years!” he joked.

Let’s focus on getting Model Y deliveries out at the planned production time, hey Elon!

Australia:

Australia probably won’t get Model Ys until 2021. It’s being close-lipped for now.